A show-reel/demo mix by Country Gents when I was one of them alongside Lee Jones who continues producing as CG's to this day.

DJ's Country Gents

Flatliners 2009 Dan Cartel and Lee Jones

Here is the second installment of my mix collection "rotary sessions" recorded September 2018. A vinyl only underground house selection with lots of fresh releases and a few classics thrown in for good measure. Please feel free to download and share. Timed comments much appreciated. X

Dj Dan Cartel-Rotary sessions vol 2 (September 2018)

I have been mixing records for 26 years now and I love underground house music. I started playing records in my friends bedroom. Eventually I bought two turntables (a technics sl150 and an sl1500) and a made2fade mixer and I was hooked.  I bought records every week often from Check Tech records and soon found a preference to the sound of the underground house and garage coming from the US and the emerging early UK garage sound. At this time in the mid 90's I lived in Somerset where there was no house scene as such since the demise of Sketch at Pawlette Manor. The free parties I was attending were mainly playing euro so called "hard house" and hard trance and the like. To my ears this "music" was so far removed from the original vibe I had experienced as a raver I decided to start taking records along. The first party was in 94 a Fat Controller party. There was a chalk board with the Dj times behind the decks so I kinda adjusted the line-up to include myself at 10am. I turned up at 10am and said to the Dj "I'm Dan I'm on next" he passed me the cans and I nervously cued up my first record. The record playing was some hard number that was popular at the time and must have been around 140 bpm, no chance of mixing out of that even on plus 8. "What the fuck am I going to do?", In the end I turned off the deck that was playing causing a rapid slowing down to stop and silence. I dropped Soft House Company "What you need" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok5Fepg_Lh0 from the top. Happily the vibe changed instantly and some people whooped and cheered.  From then on I took records to parties at beautiful locations around Somerset usually playing the sunrise set. I also got noticed by a local promoter called Terry who gave me my first paid gigs at various venues including club Loco at a night called Uzer Frenly. In 1996 I joined a Taunton based soundsystem party crew and began playing records with them and helping out to throw various free parties and club nights under the loose name of Powwow. We all played music that was much more up my street, house, oldskool rave, disco, funk, breakbeat. At this time I didn't really have a Dj name I had been billed as R-Dan "original free party maestro" on my first flyer.  Someone put me down as Desperate Dan on a Powwow flyer and the name kinda stuck for a few years. I often used to play one on one with my mate Robbie and we soon became known as Desperate Dan and Gobbie Robbie. We played at various venues around the sw like Chapel X and The Burston and ran our own night at Mr C's in Taunton. We also played guest club gigs and Dj'd on the Rizla Bar at Glastonbury 97. As powwow started to be less active at the end of the 90's and once more all the free parties had to offer was hard dance I found myself having a discussion with another house Dj I had met called Darren. We were crouched down behind the decks flicking through our records at a free party waiting to play in the morning again. "Since when can't house music be played in the dark for fuck sake?" I said. Darren explained he had got a 12 volt soundsystem together and it sounded pretty phat. "I want to put on house parties" he said. "There's a festival the Big Green Gathering coming up and I'm taking it there, bring your records". We turned up and Darren, Smooth and myself played House Music all weekend. We needed a name for our newly formed collective. The rig was powered with DC batteries so we came up with Deep Cartel. This was summer 2000 and the first DC free party was on 27th of July at Fernworthy reservoir on Dartmoor. Soon another Dj joined our ranks the amazing Elly Shaw and then we met one of our best Djs Paul Nokip who still Djs with us to this day. With Deep Cartel I have played at hundreds of club nights, free parties & festivals (including Glastonbury). Here is a link to my flyer gallery https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150373062180007&type=1&l=fa83fcd9d0

Dj Dan Cartel (Deep Cartel)

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